Situation assessment: The White House just renamed a whole technology. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order telling the US executive branch to stop using the term “artificial intelligence.” The Verge AI reports that official policy websites, policy documents, and press releases will now say only “Super Intelligence.”
It sounds like a joke, but it’s a real order. It carries real consequences for anyone who builds, sells, or regulates AI in the US.
📍 What Happened
- The signing. Trump signed the order after hosting a White House lunch with tech CEOs and government officials. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Elon Musk stood beside him afterward.
- The announcement. He first talked about the change earlier Tuesday, at an event launching America.gov.
- The reasoning. “The word super is the best word of all, and it’s the simplest,” Trump said. He added that Chinese President Xi Jinping, who visited the White House last week, “loves it” too.
- The jab at artificial. “We don’t want to hear artificial. Because it’s not artificial. It’s very powerful, it’s very brilliant.” He said the word “is like the news. Fake news.”
- The preview. Trump first floated the rebrand at the UN General Assembly last week. He framed it as a way to calm fears that AI is moving too fast and could become a safety risk.
📋 What the Order Covers
- No retroactive edits. Agencies don’t have to rewrite past regulations or documents.
- A new definition. The administration wants “Super Intelligence” to replace the broader statutory definition of AI.
- The old term goes away. Officials are expected not to even acknowledge “artificial intelligence” or “AI” in relevant settings.
⚠️ Why It Matters
The words mean different things. In the industry, “superintelligence” has a specific meaning: hypothetical systems that beat humans at almost everything. It’s the target that frontier labs say they’re chasing. It isn’t the spam filter in your inbox or the model that suggests your next show.
Calling everything “Super Intelligence” erases a distinction that policy depends on. Risk-based rules only work if you can tell a narrow classifier apart from a frontier model. Federal documents now use one word for both.
The safety message runs backwards. The stated goal is to ease public worry. But safety researchers use “superintelligence” to describe the exact scenario they’re worried about. Putting “super” on every chatbot is more likely to feed those fears than calm them.
Paperwork gets messier. Procurement language, grant solicitations, and agency guidance will start using the new term. Vendors, researchers, and compliance teams who track federal AI policy by keyword will have to adjust.
🏛️ The Signal on Regulation
The name change got the headlines. The comments on oversight may matter more.
“There’s a belief that there should be tremendous self-regulation,” Trump said after the lunch, which he called “very productive” and “extremely friendly.” He added, “We automatically have regulation with the Department of Justice, the FBI, all of that.”
That fits the administration’s light-touch approach so far. Don’t expect a new federal AI rulebook.
He also talked about data centers. Tech companies have run into the most pushback at the local level. Trump said the firms will “work to make the community happy” by offering resources and economic support. His prediction: “data centers are going to be very popular.”
🎯 What to Do Now
- Update your monitoring. If you follow federal AI policy by keyword, add “Super Intelligence” now. New documents may never say “AI.”
- Match the language in bids. Government contractors should expect solicitations to use the new term and write proposals to match.
- Plan for self-regulation. The White House is telling industry to police itself. That puts more weight on internal governance, and more liability on you if it fails.
- Expect deals over data centers. Builders will probably get federal support against local pushback, but community benefit packages look like the price.
- Watch other countries. Trump says Xi is on board. Keep an eye on whether allies or trading partners adopt the term in joint statements.
🔭 Outlook
The order doesn’t change what the technology can do. It changes how Washington talks about it, and those words end up in contracts, guidance, and eventually law. The first real test will be when an agency has to use the new term in a binding definition. Full details are in the original report from The Verge AI.